Letters of Support

LETTER TO THE EDITOR
The Beacon Journal
Friday Nov. 3, 2006

I’ve heard of “staff reductions,” but cutting the position of editor? What kind of owner will Black Press turn out to be? Well, to this dedicated newspaper reader, it looks like Black will be even worse than Knight Ridder was toward the end.

You can cut costs by laying off 25 percent of your newsroom. Now even Debra Adams Simmons gets chopped. No more editor! The laid-off people are feeling the pain. But the city of Akron is the big loser.

A strong newspaper is the single most important thing in any city. Akron deserves a Beacon Journal that isn’t afraid—or too understaffed—to take on politicians and major issues. A good newspaper can lead a city forward. The Beacon has done that, from your excellent coverage of education to your Pulitzer Prize-winning series on race relations. But what can we expect now?

The remaining reporters and editors have to fight to keep the Beacon Journal a vital, aggressive force that seeks the truth. The newspaper union, if necessary, needs to become more vocal.

Reporters and editors: You are the newspaper.

You can’t worry about the owner. You can’t worry about the “new reality” of the Internet cutting into profits of the “old media.” Just do your job, a very important job that’s even protected by the U.S. Constitution!

We readers noticed that you put the Debra Adams Simmons story on the business page. At least it was at the top. A few months ago, when Black Press slashed 39 newsroom employees—one quarter of the total—you buried it at the bottom of the business page. Where would you have run the story if it was Goodyear?

Both of those stories should have been on Page 1.

Thank-you,
Bill Bregar

Some of us have noticed you have refused to publish any letters to the editor regarding the abhorant changes occuring at the Beacon Journal. This letter has been submitted twice and regards my sadness and dismay at the way in which you are choosing to run OUR newspaper:

August 24, 2006

To the Editor:
The Beacon Journal¹s new owners are making a mockery out of the community¹s news wants and needs. They ask us what we want in a newspaper and they give usŠnot much. Under the new ownership we are told that local coverage will increase though a sizeable number of people still need state, national and world news from their daily paper.

We were naïve to think we had a chance at a real newspaper surviving when business supersedes the democratic needs of citizens seeking information. We have been watching the newspaper shrink for years. Currently, two-thirds of the front page is devoted to what¹s coming on Sunday, what¹s inside today, an oversize picture and table of Œcontents¹. With our country involved in two wars, state corruption at an all time high, the Ohio General Assembly and U.S. Congress paralyzed from doing real work due to extremist monopolizing of non-issues, you¹d think there would be plenty to write about. However, the staff has already been slashed once for Wall Street profits. Even a visiting Akron Roundtable speaker from Wall Street said Wall Street is not healthy for newspapers!

Now we learn that a quarter of the staff will be cut. Those are more middle class jobs being forced out of the region¹s market, more of our friends and neighbors out of work and perhaps moving away.

Let¹s take Black Press Ltd. at their word. They contend they will focus on local news. If they think they can do that without staff, we know the real reason they are here is not to improve news, but to maneuver for their business. One example: in this day and age, you cannot cover local education news without superb state coverage of the General Assembly. The days of sending a stringer out to cover the school board is as old fashion as local control. Without in-depth knowledge of state news, you have little understanding of local developments. We once had superb coverage of state education news. Apparently, we will no longer.

The state of the news industry is a bleak reflection of the state of the Union and the democracy. What¹s new?

Jodie M. Grasgreen

Mr. Black:

I sure hope the future of the Beacon, the employees, the retirees, and the community will be held in the highest of standards. I have been retired for ten years and have slowly watched the quality of the Beacon deteriorate not only in the content but also the concern for employees and retirees. I'm sure you are aware of the high standards that the very foundation the Beacon was established on, all of us need to work together to keep those standards high. No matter where I traveled over the years when people found out I worked for The Beacon Journal many were aware of what a high quality paper it was then. I'm regret to say I no longer hear those words. I have family all over the United States that when they visit Akron they comment on how the newspaper is no longer the newspaper they remember. The areas the Beacon no longer service surely deserve more than the verdict to stop reporting in those areas. I remember the good times and working with people that were happy with their jobs and had pride in servicing the community and their customers. Over the years the unions negotiated contracts with the thought that they would not be loosing their benefits, part of every economic package always went towards pensions and health care. Seems the trend now is that companies no longer care what happens to its employees and retirees. It is hard to build circulation when the readers are unhappy with the content of the paper? I try to think of what John Knight would do if he were alive today. Mr. Knight was a wonderful man to work for and he always had the respect of the community, the employees, and the retirees. I am hoping you and Mr. Moss will be the same. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Thank you,
Bob Rosen
Retired District Manager

To Mr. Black and Mr. Moss

Gentlemen:

While you have not been involved with the Akron area as most of us have been for our entire lives, you are probably not aware of our feelings for what the Beacon Journal has been. We had tremendous local, national, and world news delivered to us through a strong editorial and news staff that took as much pride in what they wrote as we did in what we read from them. We are seeing our people leave the Beacon as we are seeing our daily newspaper diminish to something the size of a local weekly publication, minus the classified ads.

When we picked up our Sunday edition this week, we realized that we lost the Mickey Porter column, having just lost Sarah Vradenburg on Thursday. We also knew that there were many college football games on Saturday, but we only received coverage on Ohio State. We used to spend a good hour enjoying the Sunday Beacon; we are down to 20 minutes. This is sad. And our favorite reporters are disappearing with the pages. As each week passes, we experience so much less than the Beacon has given us over the years.

While we are avid readers of Ohio.com, and while we do rely on and enjoy the web site for news updates, it cannot be enjoyed and relished in the same manner that we enjoyed and relished our Beacon over a cup of steaming coffee in the morning. We knew the staff, we appreciated their articles, and we expected to start our day with them.

We pray that those who are gone find joy in what they will do next, but we also pray that you will see how you are changing a good chunk of what comprises Akron. We are certainly not experts in the economics of the media industry. One can only imagine the difficulties of competing with web-based advertisers. So we recognize that you must have a return on your investment. And yet, we do not believe that you can reach prosperity by continuing to cut the quality and content of the paper. To do so will risk losing your faithful readers like us.

Please evaluate your plan, and please support our Beacon Journal and our community.

Al and Donna Loomis

As a loyal reader of the Beacon Journal for nearly thirty years (as long as I've lived in Akron), I have come to depend on this fine newspaper as a significant provider of news, sports information, and entertainment. As changes have come and gone with the BJ, the paper has still maintained its excellence and commitment to our community. Although no one can doubt that profitability is critical for any business venture, including media, I feel that the relationship between the paper and its community transcends business and involves loyalty on the readers' part and responsibility to the community on the BJ's part. Much of the community has not yet developed a "relationship" with you, the new owners of our newspaper, and some of the recent business moves which have occurred at the BJ stir up memories of what happened with other aspects of our community in the last 25-30 years, including the loss of our rubber companies, O'Neils and Polsky's, ad infinitum. We are hoping that our Beacon Journal does not join this list of losses, but you need to send out a strong signal, and continue sending out such signals, that you understand the community and its relationship with our newspaper. The relationship between the BJ and its readers needs to be mutally beneficial- we need each other!

Sincerely,
Chris H. Partis

Dear Mr. Black

It was not long ago that I, and many other Akron Beacon Journal readers, celebrated your arrival in our community, because it meant we would not lose a vital local institution. We appreciate your willingness to invest in our city newspaper, but these past months the news about large layoffs combined with the continuing shrinkage of news coverage in the paper has become a cause of some serious concern among many readers, including myself. Given the ease of accessing news on the internet today, and how difficult it is to change readers' habits back to the Beacon once they have settled in elsewhere, it seems that recent moves at the paper threaten to seriously weaken the paper's role as a profitable leader in our community.

The Akron Beacon Journal is one of the very few places we can still find the many different voices and perspectives that animate this area presented together in a thoughtful and serious format. It is one of the few places we can still find the kind of detailed, and critically important, investigative work that has resulted in the Beacon repeatedly winning awards, work like the School Choice series or the Race series, for instance. But, the current trajectory suggests it may not be long before the only thing unique about the Beacon is its coverage of area sports (which is also excellent, but when that becomes the only reason to get the paper, I will feel compelled to look elsewhere).

The challenges we face as a city and region cannot be adequately covered with wire stories or syndicated columns alone. And, the various potential impacts of larger national and international stories on our region will not receive the analysis they rightly deserve--and we need to read--by pasting stories from The New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Everyone understands, of course, that using these resources wisely improves the overall paper, but not when local voices, perspectives, issues, and consequences end up as endangered species. We continue to hope that your decision to buy the Akron Beacon Journal was motivated by a desire to preserve, build upon, and profit from its long tradition of excellence. I hope that this is still your mission, and to the degree that it is, you can count on the strong support of readers, such as myself and others like me.

The Beacon is the home team in Akron. We read it with passion; those of us on all sides of the aisle debate about the issues it brings to our attention. We are a stronger, more resilient, community--better able to figure out how to defend family values, liberty, and the rule of law in a time of terror--because we have the Akron Beacon Journal as the foundation of our local information system. I do not agree with every article or endorsement, but I strongly and enthusiastically support this newspaper. If there is any way I might help support the efforts of those seeking to keep the Beacon strong and, like all politics, local, please let me know at any time.

Respectfully,
Bill Lyons
Dr. Bill Lyons, Director
Center for Conflict Management
Associate Professor of Political Science
University of Akron
http://www.uakron.edu/centers/conflict